Hello everybody,
I'm new here and my partner and me have just taken on our allotment, complete with huge brambles. Any advice for getting rid would be so welcome...organic or otherwise! Thanks everybody.
Cut them down & burn them. Then dig every bit of root out and burn those too. Then start collecting jam-jars because in August you'll have a lovely crop of blackberries to make bramble jelly!
They are the bane of my life, and I bet I'm not alone!
Don't pick them until they are just about falling off, that's when they are sweetest.
Put them in a bowl of of water for a while after picking, if any float discard them
and skim off all the creepy crawlies. :o
We've had out allotment since about the end of December, and it was riddled with brambles to start with. This is taken from the bottom end;
http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/album_photo.html?c_photo=89824237
and this is taken from the top;
http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/album_photo.html?c_photo=1081701069&fit=1
The brambles were as low as ankle thick in places, and 9ft high in others, but were mostly knee deep. They covered the whole allotment, which is 140ft ish by 20ft.
We considered getting a brush cutter or flame gun but in the end, cleared it all with secateurs/hacksaw and digging. It took about two weekends for us to clear the brambles, remove the roots and burn them. We still have the roots to remove from the middle section. I'm glad we cleared it by hand, because at least it was thorough, we know the lottie better now, and we didn't pulverise the wildlife. Plus, the ground can be used straight away and is well dug once the roots are out! It's a bit later in the season for you, though. Maybe you could hire a brush cutter if you're short on time?
My only advice is, invest in some really really good gloves. :)
You can cut them down about now, and dig up all the roots. Or, cut them down now, and wait for new sappy green growth to appear then spray with Round-up at the prescribed level on the pack.
Far better to invest in some decent cultivated thornless blackberries if you want to have the fruit. But whatever you do, DO invest in some decent thick hide leather gloves as LauraB says.
Thanks everybody,
We got the leather gloves this morning, and planning to go round tomorrow and get started. We'll save some, 'cos I want the berries in Autumn. Thanks for all the advice.
Hi Laura,
Looks a bit familiar! Ours looks something like that, about 9 foot in the middle I guess. We think the land beneath is sloping away as we border a river. Its a lovely spot. We'll take some before and after photos.
I'm still chopping my 6' high bramble. :) I got some long-handled loppers which definitely helped. And I recommend any kind of liners in your gloves, it really helps! Some of those thorns are determined to get through the gloves. My friend actually wears my spring mountain-biking gloves inside the leather gloves - so as an extra they have padded palms which is really good for a long day with the loppers.
I'm being good at making sure the choppings are short enough that we can move and pile the bramble easily. I've built a wall out of some cuttings and will be burning the rest. I haven't started digging up many of the roots yet, just the ones on the lower part of my plot. I just put those on top of the 'wall' so they'll dry out and die with everything else.
Tina.
BRAMBLES, I hate em!!! ;D
House we have bought, has brambles the likes of which I have never seen! :o Dug one up yesterday that if it had of been a parsnip would have fed a family of80! Blinkin huge it was.
My method on the plot many years ago, and so adopting here, is the dig approach, then if that fails, slash n burn, and then if that fails, chemicals!! (but only nice ones ::) :o) :o :o
They are a pain in the you know what, but if you keep after them they do eventually disappear, hard work and tough gloves (as previously mentioned) does the trick! ;D ;D
DP
I needed a pick-axe for most of my first year's weeding! Some of the brambles were so deep that I ended up working around them (bits emerging through spuds & squashes). I've just hacked off whatever I could get a grip on over the year & now they're more or less gone.
As a word of encouragement, the bits that had the worst brambles have had the least amount of other stuff popping up since. The bit that appeared fairly clear at first has had all the ground elder & annual weeds popping up over the whole year & was the least productive...
Dig out the roots and burn them if they are in the main plot.
Those around the edge can be woven through fencing or hedgerow.
Do all the small bits of broken up roots needs to come out too??
Quote from: Trevor_D on March 10, 2007, 13:16:08
Cut them down & burn them. Then dig every bit of root out and burn those too. Then start collecting jam-jars because in August you'll have a lovely crop of blackberries to make bramble jelly!
They are the bane of my life, and I bet I'm not alone!
What would be the point of collecting jam jars if you have cut down and dug up the roots, and burnt it all.
Quote from: Bryan on March 11, 2007, 17:38:23
What would be the point of collecting jam jars if you have cut down and dug up the roots, and burnt it all.
Just like marestail, brambles are not got rid of so easily ... ;D
Derek :)
I thought "brambles" was swearing, but "Marestail" that really hurts.
On an allotment i had a couple of years ago, this was a marestail nightmare. d**n stuff.
Having now cleared almost 2/3 of my plot from 6 foot brambles I'd recommend going in very low with some long handled loppers or even secaturs. As you cut the stems, keep pushing them back using a rake or similar, kind of rolling them back in a big bundle. When you've got a huge mound, bash them down with the rake so there's not too much space between the stems, chuck some newspaper underneath and torch the lot of them.
Then dig out all the big lumpy roots using a pick axe or mattock and as many of the smaller ones as you can. Then use glyphosphate on any which pop up during the year. The stems I've cut but not dug out the roots are starting to flow with sap, so I guess they are all about to burst forth into luxuriant growth again.
I reckon I'll have it clear by 2015.
Since you have mentioned the G word, have you tried brushing on Deep Root gel? Its fantastic stuff - kills the weeds that laugh at glyophoshate. That includes Horse/Marestail.........yippee
the allotment next to ours isn't taken and it's cover with brambles, they keep crawling over to our lotty and they are a real pain in the a---e. started digging during the week brambles twisted in weeds what a nightmare
Cutting down by hand is usually the easiest method of clearing the top-growth of brambles and the mattock is by far the best tool for chopping out the roots. Brambles can re-grow from roots but most die. The bigger problem comes from the emerging seedlings that will inevitably follow.
Best plan is to cut down, chop out, then trench dig the area and get crops planted asap. Plant quick maturing items such as early potatoes, onion sets, broad beans peas to give a harvest by july. All emerging weeds can be hoed or snipped until crops are cleared so that a quick fork-over will enable late-summer crops to be planted such as runner beans, sweet corn, tomato, pepper from pots. This will again give a crop before being cleared over the winter when the ground can be dug over thoroughly.
Within the space of one year the ground should be reasonably clear and well cultivated and ready for better crop planing and rotations the following season.
i made a small veg patch last easter behind our garage, it was full of the stuff, but a good thorough digging after cutting away the top growth, and the amount of regrowth (bits of root i missed) was almost none existant.
just the odd bit here and there and these can be treated immediately with a paint on weedkiller. saves disturbing any veg's growing there!
Quote from: dtw on March 10, 2007, 13:45:53
Don't pick them until they are just about falling off, that's when they are sweetest.
Put them in a bowl of of water for a while after picking, if any float discard them
and skim off all the creepy crawlies. :o
I think a little salt in the water helps but if so don't forget a final rinse
If you are going to use a systemic, a lot of people recommend giving the plant a bit of a bruising before applying it.
It worked with our marestail (or horsetail - not sure which is which)
It sounds odd, but I enjoyed getting rid of the brambles on my plot. I had loads but just cut them into 2ft pieces and piled them up for burning. It was quite therapeutic and a lot quicker than you'd think. I dug the roots up later.
The worst aspect is the stems that grow low down across the ground which can trip you up very easily - be very careful where you are walking until you have cleared the ground.
As others have said leather gloves and smooth clothes rather than woolly jumpers are essential.
I had about 16 sq m of brambles that had grown so vigorously that they had taken out the windows and half the roof of my shed. After around a year of pissing about, I cut them down with a grass hook to about a foot above the ground, and then dug them out - not properly, mind, just hoiked them out as best as I could. Brambles hate disturbed ground. I then left that patch for a couple of months, and then dug out anything that returned. I realise this may not be appropriate for everyone, but it is organic!
PS - agree with everyone on the smooth clothes and gloves thing...
Thanks everybody. We got going on them a couple of weekends ago, getting in there with long handled loppers, grabbing the really thick stems and just pulling. We got some real big ones out, ten foot things. there's a bonfire in the offing now.Its been very therapeutic actually.